Hughes, Peter

Peter Hughes - Nistanimera

Nistanimera is a site of potent mergers — day and night, Greece and Italy, head and heart, liver and lights, dream and reality, within and without. Ideally it should be imagined as a cantata sung by a lost transvestite Roman Catholic/Marxist nun banged up in a detention centre off the A14. The film rights are currently under negotiation.

From reviews of a previous collection —

"beautiful delinquent gravity" —Nigel Wheale

"Peter Hughes' poetry stages the self with wit and precision at the meeting point of contradictory forces from opposed directions, like the past and the present, high art and underfoot mess, institute and instinct. The narrator absorbs or deflects these disparate demands with a virtuosic repertoire of disparate responses — serious, sardonic, musical, accusatory, grandiose, etc., bound by the shaping force of linguistic confidence. Major items control long stretches of the route — the presence of an ancient rotting city, the idea of heavenly music, the art and person of Paul Klee — halls of multi-faceted mirrors by which we see what we are to the exact syllable of foolishness and wisdom. It swallows the whole, it refuses purism. Everyone should be glad to find a truly modern poetry which raises so many meaningful smiles." —Peter Riley